For all of you aged copywriters who remember the typewriter

Just what a scientifically illiterate country needs

Twenty-seven percent.

That is the number of adults in the United States who think the sun circles the earth. Forty-nine percent don’t know that electrons are smaller than atoms. More than half think lasers are focused sound waves.* To see the survey for yourself, click here.

The Toys“R”Us spot above doesn’t promise to help much. Sure, it’s just a spot, not meant to be taken seriously. But must science and nature be boring for toys to be fun? Isn’t there room in a child’s life for play and wonder? I suggest that we have a moral imperative to ensure there is.

There is a disturbing, growing anti-science sentiment in the U.S. Odd for a society that thrives on smartphones, flies at 30,000 feet, drives at 80 mph, streams video, and inhabits climate-controlled buildings—all things we have thanks to science. You know, the stuff that this Toys“R”Us spot is telling parents not to bore their kids with._____________________*If you said, “What? Huh? That’s not right?” to any of these or other items in the survey, thank you for illustrating my point.

What the RESPONSE Agency knows about your employees (thanks to a Facebook campaign)

You don’t often hear, “It makes sense to market this on Facebook.” But we believed we had come upon such a product, which subsequent sales confirmed.

Subsequent sales told us something else. Sales from our Facebook ads soar during business hours Monday through Friday and all but die off on weekends and holidays.

As a marketer, I find that kind of information valuable. It tells me the best times to keep the ads live.

As an employer, I find that kind of information disconcerting. It tells me that people prefer not to waste their valuable leisure time on Facebook. That’s what work time is for. You know, when you thought you were paying them to, like, work and all.

Depending on how you look at it, the thumb may be pointing the wrong way.